A semiconductor integrated circuit (IC) company, such as a semiconductor wafer foundry, provides various IC manufacturing services to customers, through a plurality of manufacturing sites (e.g., fabs). When an object such as a lot (a batch of wafer in process) is transferred from one manufacturing site to another, cross-facility operations require various processing steps.
For example, engineers from an original, requesting fab need to communicate and coordinate with engineers from a backup, support fab in order to define important configuration parameters such as backup tool and process flow, recipes, data collection items, and other important parameters. Manufacturing users in the support fab need to register the target lot into a backup control system, and make sure the backup transition can be completed at the support fab. This conventional cross-facility approach costs additional manufacturing effort and resources, such as on communication and process flow mapping when a backup event is triggered.
Further, the current backup approach can introduce other problems. For example, a lot identification (ID) may be changed when the lot is transferred to the support fab for compliance to the standard of the support fab. Several items associated with the lot such as the future hold, schedule change reservation, and pre-dispatch reservation cannot perform proper backup because of the absence of proper cross-facility coordination. Also, the backup fab cannot provide another support fab for further backup. Furthermore, operation history of the lot in the support fab cannot be properly transferred back to the request fab.